Peter Sloterdijk  

From The Art and Popular Culture Encyclopedia

Revision as of 15:44, 25 June 2007

Related e

Wikipedia Wiktionary Shop Featured: Rhombicuboctahedron by Leonardo da Vinci

Peter Sloterdijk (born June 26, 1947 in Karlsruhe) is a German philosopher.

Biography

Sloterdijk studied philosophy, Germanistics and history at the University of Munich. In 1975 he received his Ph.D. from the University of Hamburg. Since 1980 he has published many philosophical works, including the Critique of Cynical Reason. In 2001 he was named president of the State Academy of Design, part of the Center for Art and Media in Karlsruhe. In 2002 he began to co-host Das Philosophische Quartett, a show on the German ZDF television channel devoted to discussing key issues affecting present-day society.[1]

Philosophy

Sloterdijk’s philosophy strikes a balance between the firm academicism of a scholarly professor and a certain sense of anti-academism (witness his interest in Osho’s ideas). Notwithstanding the criticism that some of his thoughts have provoked, he refuses to be labeled as a “polemic thinker,” describing himself instead as “hyperbolic.” His ideas reject the existence of dualisms--for example, between body and soul, subject and object, culture and nature--since their interaction, spaces of coexistence, and technical advances create a hybrid reality. Thus Sloterdijk, who is trying to develop a new humanism, sometimes labeled posthumanism, seeks to integrate different components that have been, in his opinion, erroneously considered detached from one another. This search has led him to propose the creation of an “ontological constitution” that would incorporate all beings--i.e. humans, animals, plants, and machines--as elements.

Critique of Cynical Reason

The Kritik der zynischen Vernunft (Critique of Cynical Reason), published by Suhrkamp in 1983, became the best-selling philosophical book in the German language since the Second World War and launched Sloterdijk's career as an author.

Spheres

The trilogy Spheres is Peter Sloterdijk’s magnum opus. The first volume was published in 1998, the second in 1999 and the last in 2004.

Spheres is about spaces of coexistence, spaces which are commonly overlooked or taken for granted and conceal information crucial to developing an understanding of what humans are. The exploration of these spheres begins with the basic difference between mammals and other animals: the biological and utopian comfort of the mother's womb, which humans try to recreate through science, ideology, and religion. From these microspheres (ontological relations such as fetus-placenta) to macrospheres (macro-uteri such as political structures like nations or states), Sloterdijk analyses the spheres where humans unsuccessfully try to dwell and traces a connection between vital crisis (e.g. emptiness and narcissistic detachment) and the crises that are created when a Sphere shatters.

The author has said that the first paragraphs of Spheres are “the book that Heidegger should have written," a companion volume to Being and Time, namely, "Being and Space". He was referring to his initial exploration of the idea of Dasein, which is then taken further as Sloterdijk distances himself from Heidegger’s positions.

Globalization

For Sloterdijk the present-day concept of globalization lacks historical perspective. In his opinion it is merely the third wave in a process in which humans overcome distances (the first wave being the metaphysical globalization of the Greek cosmology and the second the nautical globalization of the 15th century). The difference, in Sloterdijk's opinion, is that while the second wave created cosmopolitanism, the third is creating a global provincialism. Sloterdijk's sketch of a philosophical history of globalization can be found in Im Weltinnenraum des Kapitals (2005), subtitled "Die letzte Kugel" (The final sphere).

Genetics dispute

This controversy began shortly after a symposium on Philosophy and Heidegger and was triggered by Sloterdijk’s essay Regeln für den Menschenpark (Rules for the Human Zoo). In this essay, Sloterdijk regards cultures and civilizations as "anthropogenic hothouses," installations for the cultivation of human beings; just as we have established wildlife preserves to protect certain animal species, so too ought we to adopt more deliberate policies to ensure the survival of Aristotle's zoon politikon. Breaking a German taboo on the discussion of genetic manipulation, Sloterdijk suggested that the advent of new genetic technologies required more forthright discussion and regulation of "bio-cultural" reproduction.

The core of the controversy was not only Sloterdijk’s ideas, but also his use of the German words Züchtung (breeding, cultivation) and Selektion (selection), which recalled Nazi ideas. Sloterdijk rejected the accusation of Nazism, which he considered alien to his historical context. Still, the paper started a controversy in which Sloterdijk was strongly criticized, both for his apparent usage of a fascist rhetoric to promote Plato’s vision of a government with absolute control over the population, and for committing a non-normative, simplistic reduction of the bioethical issue itself. This second criticism was based on the vagueness of Sloterdijk’s position on how exactly society would be affected by this genetic development. After the controversy multiplied positions both against and in favor, Die Zeit published a vehement open letter from Sloterdijk to Jürgen Habermas, in which Sloterdijk accused Habermas of "criticizing behind his back" and espousing a view of humanism (i.e. critical theory) which Sloterdijk declared dead.

List of works

• Kritik der zynischen Vernunft, 1983 (Critique of Cynical Reason)
• Der Zauberbaum. Die Entstehung der Psychoanalyse im Jahr 1785, 1985
• Der Denker auf der Bühne. Nietzsches Materialismus, 1986 (Thinker on Stage: Nietzsche's Materialism)
• Kopernikanische Mobilmachung und ptolmäische Abrüstung, 1986
• Zur Welt kommen - Zur Sprache kommen. Frankfurter Vorlesungen, 1988
• Eurotaoismus. Zur Kritik der politischen Kinetik, 1989
• Versprechen auf Deutsch. Rede über das eigene Land, 1990
• Weltfremdheit, 1993
• Im selben Boot. Versuch über die Hyperpolitik, 1993
• Falls Europa erwacht. Gedanken zum Programm einer Weltmacht am Ende des Zeitalters seiner politischen Absence, 1994
• Der starke Grund zusammen zu sein. Erinnerungen an die Erfindung des Volkes, 1998
• Sphären I - Blasen, Mikrosphärologie, 1998 (Spheres I)
• Sphären II - Globen, Makrosphärologie, 1999 (Spheres II)
• Regeln für den Menschenpark. Ein Antwortschreiben zu Heideggers Brief über den Humanismus, 1999
• Die Verachtung der Massen. Versuch über Kulturkämpfe in der modernen Gesellschaft, 2000
• Über die Verbesserung der guten Nachricht. Nietzsches fünftes Evangelium. Rede zum 100. Todestag von Friedrich Nietzsche, 2000
• Nicht gerettet. Versuche nach Heidegger, 2001
• Die Sonne und der Tod. Dialogische Untersuchungen mit H.-J. Heinrichs, 2001
• Tau von den Bermudas. Über einige Regime der Phantasie, 2001
• Luftbeben. An den Wurzeln des Terrors, 2002
• Sphären III - Schäume, Plurale Sphärologie, 2004 (Spheres III)
• Im Weltinnenraum des Kapitals, 2005
• Was zählt, kehrt wieder. Philosophische Dialoge, gem. mit Alain Finkielkraut (aus d. frz.), 2005
• Zorn und Zeit. Politisch-psychologischer Versuch, 2006, ISBN 3-518-41840-8